UK Horse Racing Tips

Unfortunately, the result of the 1981 Derby will forever be overshadowed by events at Ballmany Stud, Co. Kildare on February 8, 1983. However, while the winner, Shergar, was subsequently spirited away, in the dead of night, by a gang of masked gunmen and never seen alive again, his performance at Epsom still stirs the blood of many in the racing fraternity.

Having won the Sandown Classic Trial by ten lengths and the Chester Vase by twelve lengths, much lie someone aceing the highest payout online casino games, Shergar was sent off at 10/11 favourite at Epsom. In the absence of the Dante winner, Beldale Flutter, who had beaten Shergar in what is now the Vertem Futurity Trophy as a juvenile, the pick of the opposition was the Dante Stakes runner-up, Shotgun, ridden by Lester Piggott. However, once the race was underway, the opposition, which looked weak on paper beforehand, became almost irrelevant.

Rounding Tattenham Corner – the sharp, downhill bend that leads runners into the home straight at Epsom – Shergar easily moved upsides the leaders, Riberetto and Silver Season and as soon as he took up the running, with three furlongs to run, the race was all but over. Approaching the furlong marker, BBC Radio commentator Peter Bromley exclaimed, ‘There’s only one horse in it. You need a telescope to see the rest!”

Shergar sauntered home in splendid isolation, with jockey Walter Swinburn looking around for non-existent dangers, to win, eased down, by ten lengths. In fact, such was his margin of victory – still the widest in the history of the Derby – that John Matthias, who rode the second horse, Derby Italiano winner Glint Of Gold, actually that his horse has won. We can only hope luck would go the same way for us in a  newzealandcasinos environment. The race was later described by Timeform as ‘arguably the most one-sided Derby of modern times’; Shergar was awarded a Timeform Annual Rating of 140, placing him co-eighth in the all-time list of the Timeform era, alongside Dancing Brave and Sea The Stars, among others.

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